represents the multitude who follow the beaten track in hearing without the trouble of comprehending, and whose hearts are utterly unconcerned and remain untouched. This is a strong authority for education. The Gospel demands a cultivated mind. We have no right to expect the fruition of truth in ignorance: the ground should be prepared to receive it. Very weak people and fanatics think education quite unnecessary for religious purposes. They make a great mistake, and are sowing for the fowls on the wayside.

Vv. 5 and 20. Here we have the shallow hearers; the people who are easily impressed, but have no root, or rather no depth or stability of character. Their hearts are not changed; their feelings only are affected; they endure for a while only, and the truth withers within them. When trial and temptation come, they fall away, as St. Luke has it, ch. viii. v. 13. In St. Matthew and St. Mark the word is "offended," or, according to the Greek, are made to stumble ;" and the Greek word in St. Luke (apioTavra) is the origin of our word apostatize, which is, perhaps, the best word of all; for hasty zealots, whose faith is shallow, are just the class from whom apostates spring: their creed dures not; it cannot suffer trial.

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Vv. 7 and 22. Question on the meaning of the thorns, and elicit from them, without looking at verse 22, that they mean the cares and riches of the world, which choke the truth, so that it becomes "unfruitful," or, as St. Luke more mildly puts it, "such as brings no fruit to perfection."

This well illustrates the guard which we must all keep over our hearts, and the care with which we must nurture and cherish religious instruction, whilst actively engaged in the work of the world, and its pleasures and concerns. Riches and cares are not condemned, for they are alike necessary incidences of life; but we are warned here against allowing them to oust the love of God from its place in our hearts. This part of the parable enforces the first Commandment, to which the good teacher I will never fail to refer the child. Similar doctrines are enforced in 2 St. John xiv. 16, and in Romans viii. 5, 8; also 1 Timothy vi. 9, 10, which are very pertinent. Dilate on covetousness; cite the tenth Commandment, and the fates of Judas and Ananias.

It is worthy of remark that this beautiful parable deals with three distinct degrees of scanty Christianity and insufficient faith: and that, in each case put, there is more religion than in the one which precedes it. Thus, the temptations stated are in proportion more powerful and insidious; and of these, the deceitfulness of riches is the climax. Worldly cares come next, and which have been well said to eat up that vigour

of soul which should be spent in divine things; to divert us from duty, distract us in duty, quench the sparks of good affections, and burst the cords of good resolutions." Such are the cares,-and they comprise all the lusts of the flesh,—that shallow religion never withstands. Daily and hourly do we witness the conquests of Satan with these mighty agents of evil. Make your children heed them accordingly.

Vv. 8 and 23. The good ground is best explained in St. Luke and St. Matthew; taking the two together, we find it is necessary to a saving faith, that there be first a hearing of the word; secondly, an understanding of it; thirdly, the keeping of it in an honest and good heart. Then, and then only, will the seed bear fruit, and bring forth in

the various degrees in which we learn everywhere that Christians are diversely gifted, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."

Much may be said in illustration of all this. Much stress must be laid upon the practical object of this parable. What is to be the result of the good seed in the good ground?—The fruits of righteousness. "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples."—(John xv. 8.) And that fruit is everywhere set forth in the Gospel, as consisting, after love to God, of sOCIAL DUTIES. Always uphold the great doctrines of the atonement, and the attributes and offices of the Triune Godhead, as paramount articles of faith; but, then, never cease, in season and out of season, at all times and in all ways, to convince your children that that faith is nothing worth without works. It is, in fact, a dead faith, and no faith at all. Guard them, as you would against poison, to beware of that palsying heresy, the canker of all spiritual vigour,-the fanatical dependence on vicarious righteousness by those who seek to use it as a make-weight for their own wilful shortcomings in "working out their own salvation." These slothful fanatics and one-sided professors are sham Christians, who have done vast injury to vital religion, and, "as far as in them lay," have desecrated the efficacy of grace. You will use your discretion how far this taint may have affected those under your tuition; but this parable so directly points to the great truths which make religion a reality, that the opportunity ought not to be lost of enforcing the great duty of practical holiness and Christian energy in the daily walk and work of life.

PUNCTUATION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENGLISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.

SIR,-In the February number of your valuable and interesting journal, I find a letter from C. H. Davis, with the ominous heading of "Mind your stops! One of the mysterious initiated whose special business it is to give heed to this injunction and enforce it upon others, with interest awakened I prepared to peruse this paper, if haply I might glean therefrom aught "marvellous or strange in the annals of Punctuation; when, having finished paragraph 1, I discover the writer to have taken an entirely different tack from that on which he commenced-i.e., that he is not referring to punctuation proper at all, but discoursing upon the hydra-headed theme of typographical eccentricity—a subject on which I can confidently assert, from an entire perusal of his paper, he is, necessarily, quite incompetent to offer practical suggestion or advice: and I am still further confirmed in this opinion by the very extraordinary aspect presented by pp. 69, 70, a style which I nowhere else observe, and one evidently dictated by none other than the discriminating pen of C. H. D. If your painstaking contributor had fulfilled the obvious intention of his "heading," and, dilating upon the necessity for universal education in the theory and practice of so desirable an art as Punctuation, had pointed out the easiest and best methods of teaching it in our schools, your readers would have derived an undoubted benefit, instead of being lost in perplexity at the curious ingenuity displayed by him in a demonstration as undeterminable as it seems impracticable.

So far as the use of punctuation is concerned in the printing of

books, &c., it must be manifest-first, that no author could properly achieve it in the manuscript; secondly, that he would never attempt so laborious and needless a task; thirdly, that the printer's reader is far more qualified than himself for it, and would in all probability undo all that had been thus so carefully done, when the printed sheets came before him. With respect to the advisability of a uniform system of style amongst printers, there can be little to object; but as concerns the " diversity of punctuation" mentioned by your correspondent, it is evidently a misnomer on his part, as he should be aware that the object of punctuation proper is, the correct rendering of sentences-the facilitating a ready grasp of an author's meaning; a thing, once effected, which lasts as long as the pages themselves, and the operations of which can be based only upon acknowledged rules, and the exercise of practical clearsightedness in their application whereas, I appeal to any who may have perused C. H. D.'s letter, whether it tends not rather to confuse than to enlighten.

I would further object that C. H. D. is incorrect in supposing the instances he cites are the only two now in use: their name is Legion. Example 1, I would suggest, is not necessarily even correct: "Is that work out of print?" he argues, should have the interrogation outside, because it is the bookseller's expression, and not the inquirer's. I can see no reason to suppose that the words "out of print " may not be primarily used by the inquirer, with reference to a similar phrase previously used by the bookseller;—Who shall determine they are not? and in this case the interrogation should be inside; but were it not so, the sentence, without the words quoted, is incomplete, and consequently no inquiry at all. He observes, also, that the best mode of marking interpolations is by brackets: an admission at once of want of information; for brackets, in such cases are alone correct, and if parentheses be used, it is an error. Again, his proposed plan for omissions is "a line of dots" in numerical proportion to the matter omitted. Supposing this to be followed, and six dots allowed for a short sentence, imagine the grotesque appearance of a page more or less of dots, answering in arithmetical ratio to as many sentences omitted, together with the vast utility of the information thus acquired! In the postscript is laid down another new plan for bible referencesone injudicious and superfluous, to say the least of it: to prevent confusion of chapter and verse," C. H. D. proposes an italic v for the former; truly, all who run may read, if this pedanticism be practised; but can it possibly be necessary to have anything further than Roman numerals and plain figures in contradistinction the one to the other; and yet C. H. D. particularly cautions authors "to be careful" always to italicize their v's !

"the

I have troubled you thus far not so much for the purpose of disproving C. H. D.'s observations, as that must be quite unnecessary to those able to estimate their real worth, but to disabuse some of your readers of the perplexity they will have experienced at finding so simple and necessary an art encumbered by such absurd and unnecessary restrictions, and to demonstrate the futility of any but those to whom it rightly pertains, arguing respecting such unimportant matters of detail, on which there are as many opinions as opiniators. If C. H. D. will trouble to explain a facile method of instructing our youth in the "art of reading and writing correctly," as regards this particular, he may confer a public benefit, and will not then have for his objector

F. F. W.

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DISCIPLINA REDIVIVA-No. 11.

MODERN LANGUAGES AND TRAVEL.

-Continued.

EXT of some points concerning travel, apart from the consideration of language. "Travel, in the younger sort," says Bacon, "is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience."

It is as a part of education that it comes before us here, and therefore the "mental preparation" for it is the first thing to be considered. "In this preparation lies some of the greatest utility and of the greatest pleasure connected with travelling; and without this preparation, what a small thing travel would be. What is it to see some tomb, when the name of the inmate is merely a pompous sound, -the name of an unknown king, duke, or emperor, compared with what it is to see the tomb of one whose fortunes you have studied—who is a favourite with you-who represents yourself, or what you would be—whose very name makes your blood stir? The same thing, of course, applies in travel to knowledge of the arts, sciences, and manufactures. Knowledge is the best excitement and the truest reward for travel-at once the means and the end. A dignified and intelligent curiosity, how much it differs from mere inane lion-hunting, where the ignorant traveller gapes at wonders which the guides know far more about than he does."*

As indicating some of the subjects on which an intelligent mind naturally fixes in a new field of observation, we think it may be interesting to transcribe a few passages out of some recent letters and a MS. book of notes placed at our disposal by a friend just returned from Italy,—one who has known the needs of younger minds, and is interested in any scheme which has for its object the smoothing of the rough places of discipline, amidst which he has himself grown grey. In them the reader will have the opportunity of learning what kind of topics will (in travel) demand his careful scrutiny, at the same time that, in order to their full appreciation, they will involve in the observer a degree of preparation co-extensive with the limits of a high and liberal education.

"Rome, Jan 7, 1856.-I have jotted down each day's exploration of this wonderful old city, and shall have much to tell you; but the whole thing still appears a dream. It grows in interest every day, and I long for time to set quietly to work, with my books around me, and master the whole thing. What a place for a course of history, not Roman only, but of a large portion of the world.

"This morning we have been examining old MSS. in the Vatican Library; also very interesting antiquities. Fancy a suite of galleries 500 paces long in a straight line. The Vatican is a little city in itself, connected with St. Peter's by the grand Scala Regia. My last expedition has been to the Palace on the Quirinal-another stupendous pile, with the colossal equestrian statues of Phidias and Praxiteles [query], and a noble fountain in front, on the brow of the Quirinal. . We have had a most interesting expedition beyond the walls, to the Catacombs ; two hours underground, with the famous Padre Marchi, the Jesuit, lecturing in the middle,† each person of the party carrying a wax taper

*Companions of my solitude.

+ My friend, although not an Italian scholar, was able to follow the deliberate and clearly articulated words of the venerable lecturer, from his knowledge of Latin.

-a complete subterranean church; you may wander for miles, but not without a guide or a 'clew.' . . . As we approached the Pincian last night, a magnificent thunderstorm was passing over, and lighting St. Peter's and the city grandly. ... There is a tragic element mingling with the gay temper of this strange city, and the interest excited by the whole is sad, very sad."

..... From another letter of the same date :-" My time in Rome is nearly over; but once seen, one can never forget it. You and must have your turn next; but don't think of it till you have got up a competent knowledge of Italian. If I were your age again, I would master talking French and Italian and German. Without the I could not have

=

done half I have done. Hereafter journeys to Paris, Rome, &c., will be as easy as from York to London, or London to Edinburgh formerly; and some travelling is almost necessary nowadays to a schoolmaster. Old as I am, I have been working like a schoolboy, at odds and ends of time, and reading an Italian comedy with Signor Lucentini, 7 paoli 3s. an hour. My object has been to master the pronunciation; the rest one may do for one's self. . . . . Every day here has been a little history, or rather a turning over of pages of this tattered and shattered huge old stone book, in which the history of nearly half the world's duration is written. A queer old collection of antiquities, now Pagan, now Christian, but more frequently Pagan, Christian, Greek, Egyptian, Etruscan, Barbarian jumbled together-fine scope for the critical faculty in all its branches—a mine of learning half disinterred-art from the sublimest conception to the lowest bathos,

"A ramble along the old Via Appia is like passing through a long gallery of antiquities-the Campagna, with its aqueducts stretching away out of sight-the Alban and Sabine hills-the very stones broken up for the roads are historical-bits of statuary marble and granite. Then away over the Campagna to Fidena and Veii on horseback, or on foot to the Circus of Romulus, son of Maxentius, and the Grotto of Egeria (there is a stump of her left, hung with maiden-hair fern), and the temples of Divus Rediculus and Bacchus. Oh, for a good horse over that Campagna, among those noble indigenous buffaloes and oxen, and winding through the valleys, for the Campagna is not a plain, although it looks so from the high points of Rome; but I have not been able to compass this, not thinking it prudent to ride yet. One day you are on the top of St. Peter's or the Capitol, or the broken arches of the baths of Caracalla, hanging in air; another, deep down (75 feet) in the Catacombs or Columbaria-wondrous places; or you may stand, lost in dreams, on the ponte rotto (rupto), i, e. Pons Janiculensis, and look down on old Tiber, running yellow as he did when Horatius Cocles jumped in, and when Horace sang; and see one way the island of the Tiber, with its two bridges; and the other, the old Pons Sublicius (a few stones), the mouth of the Cloaca Maxima of Tarquin, the temples of Vesta and Fortuna Virilis, and Rienzi's house, with the fountain where Castor and Pollux watered their horses after the battle of Lake Regillus, and the Forum and Capitoline and Palatine and Aventine, all within a moderate walk. I like this point vastly; one seems to have got down to the level, the groundwork of Old Rome; elsewhere, save on the Appian Way, or at the bottom of an excavation, or on the Campagna, you are walking over the débris of ages and empires, some twenty feet deep and